Media / Media Bias

Surprised the CBC didn't think of this

By arthur Weinreb

Friday, april 29, 2005

It turned out that three people who heckled a campaign speech given by British Conservative Party leader Michael Howard were planted by the British Broadcasting Corporation. They were equipped with microphones and were discovered when some of Howard’s people noticed that BBC cameras were trained on the hecklers and not on the Tory leader. The hecklers yelled such things as "Michael Howard is a liar" and "You can’t trust the Tories" while the cameras rolled and the microphones made sure that they were audible.

The BBC admitted its actions, but not surprisingly defended what it did. Reminiscent of the "I was only doing research" defense that many people use to rationalize the downloading of child pornography, the BBC justified the stunt by saying that the network was producing a program on the history of heckling. The program, entitled "The Heckler", appeared on BBC Three last Monday evening.

The BBC, sometimes referred to as the Blair Bootlicking Corporation, said that they "observed" meetings and speeches of both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties in producing the program. However, they appeared to have singled the Conservatives out as far as recording the hecklers yelling that the party and its leader were all liars and dishonest.

In defending itself, the BBC said what you would expect them to say; that they simply provided the microphones to the hecklers so that they could be recorded. The corporation in no way sees this as an encouragement for those people to heckle the Conservative leader, more than they might otherwise have done.

The head of BBC’s current affairs, Peter Horrocks, was quoted as saying that the heckling had been "light hearted" and the comments were "mild" and "jocular". It’s hard to see how calling someone a liar can be "jocular" — it must be a British thing.

Besides showing an obvious bias against the Conservative Party, this is another illustration of how the media, in its exuberance to make its own opinions known, crosses the line between reporting news and making news. The BBC is consistently denying that what it did affected how the three hecklers that were provided microphones acted. Clearly the hecklers must have realized that they were the centre of the BBC’s attention; not Michael Howard, and acted accordingly.

This makes the BBC’s habit of stacking town hall meetings with Liberal friendly people look like child’s play.